Comment by godelski
1 year ago
> all algorithms used must be deterministic
Be careful with your choice of wording here. There are many non-{AI,ML} algorithms that are not deterministic. Hell, we don't even have to go to Turing or talk about Busy Beaver. What about encryption? We want to inject noise here and want that noise to be as random and indeterminable as possible.
There are also many optimization algorithms that require random processes. This can even include things like finding the area under a curve because it may be faster to use Monte Carlo Integration. You might not even be able to do it otherwise.
> and diagrammable
An ANN is certainly diagrammable.
I understand the intent of your words and even agree with it. I think openness and transparency are critical. But because I care and agree I want to make sure we recognize how difficult that the wording is. Because it is often easy to implement a solution that creates a bigger problem than the thing we sought to solve.
Personally, I'd love to see that things become "Software Available." I mean if it was a requirement for everyone, then it is much easier to "prove" when code is cloned. Of course, this is easier said than done since there's many "many ways to skin a cat" but in essence, this is not too dissimilar from physical manufacturing. It's really hard to keep secrets in hardware. Plus, there's benefits like you can fix your fucking tractor when it breaks down. Or fix a car even if it is half a century old. I do expect if this would become reality that it'd need a lot more nuance and my own critique applies, but I just wanted to put it out there (in part, to get that critique).
Obviously a diagram of an ANN is ‘possible’ and just as obviously it’s not in compliance relative to an algorithm with a runbook as most governments recognize and use. I’m not writing a forum comment with the law or rule as I would craft it to ensure that a judge can reasonably find against such examples. HN is not a useful place to workshop legalese :)
No law or rule will be able to, in ‘legal’ code terms, fully exclude attempts to slip through loopholes in the proposed restriction. That doesn’t at all invalidate the threat of it; that’s just the cost of doing business with any legal code — which, itself, cannot be interpreted fully deterministically at all.
You’re welcome to propose better wording, of course; and: I also recommend writing a letter to an elected representative or state board if you do! I think they would jump at the chance to even the odds without being seen as disadvantaging their sponsors.
Fair enough. Though I suspect that it will be quite difficult to find the right words, even with substantial legalese. But I did want to make the note of caution. Especially as this even permeates into the public language, which in turn ends up being what politicians use because they just care about signaling instead of solving the actual problems...
“Decision processes can be analyzed and reproduced by a typical citizen without burdensome preconditions” is a nice simple way to put it. Neural network training is not accessible to a typical citizen (one that you might find on a jury) without burdensome effort involving terabytes of input data and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a black-box pre-trained network does not satisfy the terms of replicable as it cannot be interpreted by analysis. Techies will object that ‘burdensome’ is poorly defined, but it serves to concentrate the subjective judgement into a measurable test that can be evaluated and justified by the judiciary; I expect that a judge would not find “download and execute an AI” to pass that test, but you could always explicitly analysis to be possible in a reasonable length of time without a computer. Similarly, language regarding ‘typical citizens’ is already well-known and understood in the field.
This is all moot if no one asks for it, though :) The exact wording of the deck chairs has no bearing on the course of the ship and all.
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For the most sensitive algorithms, if the algorithm cannot be explained in easily understandable language (as determined by a jury), then it's illegal.
(It's how we use paper ballots rather than machines, and especially not everyday computers for voting : the extra risk just isn't worth it.)
You've just made
and so much more illegal. You've probably made all of computing illegal because good luck explaining systemd let alone kernels to a jury.
You’ve just rejected an idea because your interpretation of it takes a severe path where use of randomness is incompatible with documenting an algorithm. Flowchart the process “flip a coin” to demonstrate why this world-ending interpretation isn’t so.
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Come on, where did systemd come into the picture? Don't be obtuse.
No one is saying that the algorithm should be three if statements that the jury can understand in 30 seconds.
As an example, I'd say that doing maximum bipartite matching using factors like proximity, rating, etc, for drivers/gigs is a reasonable thing that you can explain to the jury. It's not that they have to understand the proof for the algorithm itself.
The most if not only important thing is that you should be be able to convince the jury that you're not including criteria in the matching process that is actively or accidentally malicious towards the gig workers.
The problem with high dimensional LP solvers, optimisation problems, PID controllers, or other systems with a feedback loop is that it's very tempting to include revenue (or a confounding factor thereof) into your objective. This can, as you might imagine, lead to something that harms the workers.
On the other hand, worker satisfaction is much much harder to quantify and is not included in the objectives at all usually. Number of active work-hours and simple things like that are not typically a good signal because of the fundamental nature of most gig work in this context -- they are doing it out of necessity, and taking a risk losing out on employee protections.
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Which is the point : "computing" shouldn't be involved in these decisions.